Trainer Mick Price is positive he is sending Golden Slipper favourite Samaready into Saturday’s Group 1 race at the top of her game in a bid to remain unbeaten.
Price has had to raise Samaready to peak condition twice in one campaign after winning the Group 1 $1m Patinack Farm Blue Diamond Stakes (1200m) at Caulfield on February 25, sometimes a job which is hard to achieve.
The top Victorian trainer was well aware of the task ahead and sent his filly straight to the paddock for nine days after her dominate win in the Blue Diamond before her final lead up to the Group 1 $3.5m AAMI Golden Slipper (1200m) at Rosehill on Saturday.
“We gave her nine days in the paddock after the Blue Diamond and if she had shown any reason to stop I would have said stop, I don’t want to be nursing a horse in,” Price said.
“But we gave her a break and she blooms, we work her and she wins so we are at this point now where everything is done and we are ready to go.”
“She’s ready. If she runs the race of a horse that has had enough I couldn’t predict it.”
Samaready made her Sydney debut when an impressive winner in the Group 2 $300,000 Jacobs Creek Reisling Slipper Trial (1200m) at Rosehill on March 24 and kept record in tact making it four from four.
Price has been pleased with his More Than Ready filly since arriving in Sydney and had no reason to change his view after the filly worked strongly at Randwick on Tuesday morning.
“I’ve got no negatives to put forward, she has to peak twice but she has the constitution and the soundness and the two year old ability,” Price said.
“She worked with Leichtenstein on Tuesday. I was appreciative of Ron Quinton for supplying a good working horse, and she worked strong to the line and through the line. She had a good blow but recovered well.”
Samaready will be trying to emulate last year’s Slipper winner Sepoy who was able to win the Blue Diamond-Golden Slipper double for trainer Peter Snowden and jockey Kerrin McEvoy.
Price said that he had rarely concentrated on the Golden Slipper and Samaready will be his only runner since Halibery ran fifteenth to Polar Success in 2003.
But he regards it as one of the major races on the Australian Racing Calender and it would look good to have a Golden Slipper winner beside your name.
“Personally I think you need it on your CV, you need to win the big races, the Cox Plates, the Melbourne Cups, the four big sticks and the Golden Slipper is one of them,” Price said.
“If I won I don’t know what I’d think, all I know is stay cool, train your horses and so far it has been good.”
Price said he would have liked to come up against boom colt All Too Hard in the Slipper but the decision of the Hawkes stable not to accept and keep him for the Group 1 $500,000 Inglis Sires Produce Stakes (1400m) at Randwick on April 14 has made the job a little easier.
